Three hundred and forty-seven steps up at the Central School of Ballet, Clerkenwell, there's a high-ceilinged, raftery room filled with light. Reaching that room is the peak of any student's career, because it's there that the best dancers get personal tuition from their teachers. And to be one of the best dancers at the Central School of Ballet, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary, means being a future prima ballerina, a Darcey Bussell or Sylvie Guillem.

The fashion photographer Tony McGee remembers the first time he walked to the top: 'The light was flooding in. I couldn't believe how many windows there were - I think I counted 27. The lamps that hung down reminded me of old photo floods from the film studios. And the room was very dusty; there's a quality of benediction there.'

McGee spent two years tramping up and down the stairs to the room with his Rolleiflex and his Leica: 'I think it must be like these guys who become addicted to war, like Don McCullin.' He got through 700 rolls of film in what turned into an obsessive hunt for ever more divine images. 'I can't remember a similar situation, except being in Egypt and going to a temple and photographing Christy Turlington, the model… the light and her face were so incredible, I could've just photographed for weeks on end.'

McGee is a lover of classical beauty but kept at a remove from his subjects. 'I actually like the distance,' he says, 'because it's more intriguing if there's no contact.' In any case, the dancers were not there to make small talk: 'They completely ignored me. They were so full of grace, so full of their own good intention and concentration.'

They loved to see the photographs, though: 'For someone who moves around and can't ever fully witness themselves, a still photograph is something they love, because they can gaze at it and understand just what they're doing wrong.'

'Room at the Top' (Splendor Editions, £45) by Tony McGee, with a foreword by Nicky Haslam, is published on 15 August